A question about atheistic “beliefs” (opinions, guesses, etc.)

[Mister Agenda]

I’ve known and been friends with many individuals who use “atheist” as a descriptor …and to a person, each of them has one of the following two beliefs, opinions, or guesses:

1)      There are no gods.
2)      It is more likely that there are no gods than that there is at least one god.

I’m wondering if this is a universal truth (or close to a universal truth)  about people who use the descriptor…so what better place to ask it than an Internet Atheist Forum…and what better people to ask than people who use the descriptor?

Do any of you know people who use the descriptor “atheist” to describe themselves, but who do not subscribe to at least one of the two items mentioned above?

Is it your opinion that asserting one or both is universal to people who apply the descriptor to themselves?

That's actually a fair cop. I suppose there might be some atheist somewhere who thinks it is more likely at least one god exists than not and is just determined to not believe anyway. I don't mind saying I believe gods or a God are unlikely.

However which deity gets which estimate depends on the claims. A God that is omniscient and omnipotent has attributes that contradict each other (if it can do something other than what it has foreseen, it is not omniscient, if it can do something it has not foreseen, it is not omniscient); it is a married bachelor, a square circle, it does not exist. The God of Abraham as described in the Bible created days before he created the sun, flooded the entire world up past the mountaintops, and stopped the sun in the sky for the convenience of Hebrews fighting a battle; those things did not happen therefore the God that did them does not exist.

Some deities do not have attributes that contradict each other or acts that contradict what is known of physical reality. They still readily fall into what we know of myth-making and story telling and have no evidence that supports their actual existence, but they are not flat-out impossible so I rate them merely highly unlikely.

And full disclosure: I do not use a defintion of god that is non-supernatural. Super-advanced aliens or computers do not count, even if they create a universe or we cannot distinguish their technology from magic. That said, I do not claim such a being could not convince me it is a god. I would certainly call it a god if I thought it would do something awful to me if I didn't.